Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

Warmly lit, comfortably appointed and bordered with
tall bookcases and antiques, the study and guest
bedroom became David’s first solid home away
from home, a place he could turn to when the tiny
house in Bromley became too stifling, or, as it would
during this period, if Terry’s behavior became too
upsetting. He would pull a book from the shelf,
whether recommended by Pitt or fascinating on its
own, and forget about his life for a few hours with the
help of Wilde, Swinburne, Waugh and Orwell or the
poetry of William Butler Yeats.
By the mid-sixties, Kenneth Pitt was already what
could be considered a show business veteran as
well. In the late 1940s, after his discharge from the
military, he worked for the publicity firm of J. Arthur
Rank, escorting actresses like Jean Simmons, of
Guys and Dolls fame, to functions and parties. His
work took him overseas to America and Canada in
the early fifties, where he signed and represented
several major pop, jazz and swing musicians,
including Stan Kenton, Les Paul, and Mel Tormé,
“the Velvet Fog.” He entered the sixties with a very
confident style of artist representation firmly in place
(for some reason I picture him as Sir John Gielgud in
The Loved One when I imagine his pre-David
existence), especially in Los Angeles. Pitt was
primarily interested in finding diamonds in the rough,
young talent in need of nurturing, encouragement,
refinement and motivation.
“A classic management style,” he has said. “They
were taken from scratch, given an opinion of what I